paths that the snow spreads a spotless, unbroken sheet. On the open fields and pastures it is broken by the stems of the wild roses, bearing their brilliant red hips, the hardhack, the wild carrot which fills its cup with it, the fluffy seed-plumes of the golden-rods. The branches of the trees soon shake off its downy flakes, and, looking athwart the landscape, the pure white spaces form but a minor part of the whole scene, broken by house and fence and woodland, which are clearly outlined against its whiteness. Clear as the air is, - the sun shining from a cloudless sky, - the valley stretching away at my feet in the afternoon becomes suffused with mystic light as of Indian summer, and as the day advances, the distant hills seem to float in a warm haze in which they fade away, carrying the eye to the limit of vision, and leaving it fixed upon the glow which shrouds but glorifies the far horizon. Near by, the village spire is bathed in the fading light; no- I should not say fading light, for the sun is still above the horizon, and the spire stands out clearly against the sky. But it is the reverse of Wordsworth's fading "into the light of common day," - it is rather, as it were; "trailing clouds of glory" that, lighted by the sinking sun, it lifts itself into the air above the tree-tops. And the tree-tops themselves, those delicate sprays which now we see prodigally scattered around us, as if they were not "of beauty all compact," partake of the illumination, and to the very tips of their bud-crowned twigs thrill with the flooding light of the parting day. DECEMBER 6, 1893. VIII. A NUMBER of my friends appear to be in a complete maze as to what inducement can be strong enough to lead me, in the dead of winter, to desert the pavements, the trolley cars, and the throng of the city for the hilly dirt-roads, the snow-covered wood-paths, and the rocky hillsides of the country. A great portion of our reading and thinking people, or those whom we deem such, seem to have become cockney to the core. In nothing perhaps is the modern tendency toward urban life more strikingly shown than in this change of mental attitude wrought by habit and association, this loss of appreciation of the delights of rural life. I sincerely trust that the wave has reached its highest point, and that ere long we shall begin to see a reaction toward a more healthy ideal. After the warm sun and rapid thaw of yesterday, I woke this morning to find the air full of the soft falling snow, and the discoloured track in the middle of the road again decently covered with a veil of white. The snow continued to fall throughout the morning, not heavily, but steadily, and toward noon, covering myself with a long mackintosh, I sallied forth to get the benefit of it at first hand. I took the mountain road: on the left the ground fell away rather gently to the broad intervale, while on the right, beyond a narrow valley, at a few hundred yards' distance, the hillside rose steeply to the height of several hundred feet, here covered with dense wood, and there by scattered trees and rocks, now and then accented by a bold cliff; the ground all robed in white, and the trees, especially the numerous evergreens, singly or in groups, all heavily weighted with their downy garments. "Fast fell the fleecy shower." There were as yet only two or three inches of new fallen snow, and walking, though warm work, was not very difficult, as it would have been had the snow been deeper. Travelling on foot in heavy snow, though exciting and exhilarating, is hard enough for a man; for a woman, with skirts, it must be something appalling. One of my neighbours told me last night how in her girlhood she had suddenly been seized one day with a desire to see how the wood looked in winter. She started alone, and had travelled some distance from the house before she realized what she had undertaken. The weather was mild, and the snow was up to her knees; but she struggled on, becoming hotter and hotter, but fearing to stop for a moment to rest. The work became heavier and heavier as her strength diminished; she was a mile from shelter, and discomfort gradually gave place to alarm and something approaching terror. There was nothing to be done but to struggle on through that unending lonely waste, which yet ended at last, when, completely exhausted, she found herself again under a friendly roof. And how did the wood look in winter? Alas! she had to confess to her sisters that she not seen the wood through which she had made her way; the burden of the walk had been much too great. |